This year’s Christmas Special will be held at Queens Park, Bolton on Friday 27th December. For something a little different we’ll be making use of the MapRun smartphone app which allows competitors to register their “punches” virtually – more details below. This will be followed by food at the highly regarded Cafe Italia.

Please contact Caroline Barcham on c.barcham@sky.com if you intend to come, to give us an idea of numbers!

Location and Parking

Orienteering – use the south car park near the cafe, accessed off Spa Road, BL1 4SL. Registration will be just inside the park near the cafe.

Food – Cafe Italia, 877–879 Moss Bank Way, Bolton, BL1 5SN

Timings

Registration from 10:00. Starts between 10:30 and 11:00.

Then Cafe Italia from 12:00.

Courses

There will be several short courses around the park making use of the POC and several “virtual” controls for those using the MapRun app.

MapRun Further Information

MapRun is an app which loads a map marked with controls onto the smartphone screen. Using the phone’s GPS signal, the app recognises when a control is visited and registers that control, making an audible bleep so the user knows it has been registered. You can navigate either using the smartphone screen or using a paper map which will also be available.

Please download the MapRun app in advance and register yourself.

Supply your name and some other details.

You can look at all the MapRun courses available all over the world but for the Christmas event there is a demo that you can look at.

Click on ‘EVENT LIST’

Scroll down the folders until you get to the ‘UK’ and click on it.

Scroll down to ‘Manchester’ and click on it.

Scroll down to the folder called ’SELOC’ and click on it.

You will see the ‘Xmas Demo’. Click on it.

It will load and the App will return to the top page.

Click on ‘GOTO START’. (At this point competitors are normally asked for a PIN but this is not a requirement for the demo).

The map appears on the screen as does the ’Start the GPS button’. Once this is pressed you will be told that ‘Your time starts when the GPS detects the Start’

Which may take a couple or three minutes although it is usually much quicker.

For the actual event there will be additional non-demo events for which a PIN will be given out at the start.

Once finished, the results will be available live within the app.

As noted above, paper maps will be available so navigating using a smartphone screen is not necessary, but you can still use the app to track your controls!